Emerging diseases : A smoking gun? - Drug resistance in hospitals has been traced to the farmyard

FARMERS are the prime suspects in the creation of a human "superbug", according to genetic evidence linking a farmyard antibiotic to the emergence of a drug-resistant human pathogen. The discovery will fuel calls for a ban on the use of antibiotics to promote the growth of farm animals.

Bacteria called enterococci normally live harmlessly in the guts of people and animals, but can kill people with impaired immune systems. Increasingly, they are becoming resistant to drugs. And in 1986, a strain that was resistant to vancomycin, an antibiotic used as a last resort, appeared in France. Similar superbugs soon emerged elsewhere in Europe, and from 1989 they spread through hospitals in the US.

At first, experts blamed the emergence of vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) on the overuse of antibiotics in hospitals, but studies showing that pigs and poultry harboured VRE raised suspicions that perhaps they were originally foodborne pathogens.

Animals ...

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